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Category: Diary

It is very important that people that are close to a person with autism, to understand how invasive, confronting, uncontrollable, heavy and mentally exhausting a meltdown can be in the human brain. Most meltdowns start with an overdose of (earlier) sensory or stress overloads, which will shut down higher-order brain functions.

In a meltdown, (almost) all executive functions (like reasoning, memory, planning and decision-making) are shut down. Everything gets slower with no focus. Language is affected too and it becomes (almost) impossible to communicate adequately with others using normal structured sentences, while finding the right matching words. The brain becomes (very) chaotic because focus starts to wither. This is a moment where it becomes difficult to find a way out of the situation.

When not able to escape the situation, this neurological chaos in the brain can build up and result in a total internal cognitive shutdown or an explosive outburst, which is quite common during a meltdown. This explosive outburst may seem to come from nowhere, but it is mostly an end-result of an accumulation of sensory, cognitive and emotional overload, which may have started hours or even days earlier. Continue reading “When in meltdown, take care!”→

I’ve always had that ‘unnatural’ shyness, which is bothering me more, the older I get. A few years ago, I found out it is merely a container-word, for so much more than having a red face and being unable to talk or initiate things.

It’s a container-word with many faces. Anxiety, not knowing how someone reacts, fear of rejection, shyness and often not being able to see or know what somebody thinks of my awkward behavior at that moment.

Yesterday, I had this horrible thing happening to me again and it went way quicker than expected. I’ve already felt that the pressure was becoming too much, when my brain started to scream “STOP” towards me, but also to the people around me. It was a truly embarrassing situation, which I had been pushed into!

To avoid over-stimulation and early fatigue, I pre-order every week 2 * 6 liters of biological 3.5% fat milk, because their brand is one of the only ones, which does not turn my stomach and intestinal system into a full war-zone. As many people with autism, I got a condition in my intestinal system. Also, I was quite sick for over a week, with fever and heavy medicines, because of an urinary tract problem, making my left nut being bigger than the size of a Dinosaur-egg! That pain is indescribably high. Continue reading “Our world is not ready for autism yet..”→

Now, this one is a heavy one to come out with, because it is something which I am entirely not proud of. Not only is structural order a necessity in every modern house, but it is also the only way, to be able to receive people in a “clean” environment, without getting the instant thought of being a caveman or worse. Paperwork can already make a huge difference in that setting.

It happens almost every time, when meeting someone I know and getting that first word which is Hi and I already know what the next question is going to be. It are those hidden rules of communication and social engagement, which are totally not hidden at all, but yet, not entirely understood. Because, depending on my answer to that question the rest of the conversation will either drastically change or it will just finish with a smile and a goodbye.. Continue reading “How are you? Those dreadful words!”→